Gopro Dual Hero 3D Thread

I've been shooting underwater 3D video for a couple of years now, and 2D video & still in various forms for about 30 years. Up until this year, my 3D video shooting has been with a JVC-TD1 which I consider to be an excellent underwater camcorder. Within the last year, I've aquired two Gopro Dual Heros along with the four 3+ Blacks to go in them. When I bought the first one, I had fairly low expectations for the 3D it could do. Boy was I surprised! I haven't dove with it yet but plan to this summer in the Bahamas for some shark & wreck diving. The plan is to mount both of the Gopro Duals on the TD1 housing pre aimed to line up with the LCD viewfinder on the TD1. They'll be set to shoot at different framerates and FOVs. In post, they'll be combined on the timeline with content from the TD1 which has a fairly narrow FOV.

Anyway, I fully realize that 3D is the Rodney Dangerfield of video these days- no love or respect. And, further realize, that there aren't a lot of us out there. Nevertheless, I wanted to start a dedicated Gopro Dual 3D thread for anyone who uses one or is interested in Gopro 3D.

I just got back from a week of diving in the Bahamas where I got to use the 3D Duals for the first time underwater. I used 2 Dual housings mounted to the JVC-TD1 housing. Both were set at 2.7K in Protune mode with white balance set at RAW- very impotant. One camera was medium FOV and the other was set to wide FOV. The Gopros were nothing short of stellar performers and easily outstripped the TD1 in dynamic range. They handled much wider contrast in scenes where the TD1- which is really pretty good- was blowing out highlights. Also, I don't feel that the lack of a dome port caused any problems with distortion or chromatic aberrations. This goes against common orthodoxy, but that's the way I see it! Also, the Gopro, even at wide FOV showed NO barrel distortion at all. Quite the underwater bonus!

At this point, I would have to say that for anyone serious about doing high quality underwater 3D video, the Gopro Dual would be very hard to beat even by camera systems costing several thousand dollars and weighing 30lbs. more. It's really that good!

Sometime in the future, I'll post a link to the video I plan to mix from the content taken on this trip. A lot of sharks, wrecks, and beautiful reef scenes.

I am using 2 separate Dual housings with each housing set at different FOV- one medium, the other wide FOV. The cameras in each housing are at the same settings. Sorry if my previous post was confusing on this point. I'll try to correct it.

Depending on the editing software you use, 1m can be quite meaninless. I routinely shoot within 1 foot. Negative parrallax- 3D popout- is controversial as the 3D purists abhor it. In order to get it, you have to shoot at 4 feet or preferably less. I strongly disagree with their point of view and go out of my way to get underwater content in the front of the screen. Gopro Dual at medium FOV or wide, have no problem converging under 1m. And, even if you do go closer than they can converge- probably under 1 foot, this can still easily be corrected in post. At this point, my primary NLE is Grass Valley Edius which can converge virtually anything. Power Director, although not nearly as robust as Edius, also can do a pretty good job. I have a Youtube video with morays- shot with a JVC-TD1- where, at times, I was under a foot from them. As they moved back and forth, I had to keyframe the stereoscopic adjustment to keep them converged, but there's virtually nothing that can't be converged in post.

This is an underwater video I shot a couple months ago while diving in the Bahamas. It's about a half hour long and has 3 chapters: Sharks, Fish Schools & Coral Gardens, & Shipwrecks. I've been working on it for over a month now. Hopefully, Youtube hasn't butchered it too badly. Editing and rendering all with Edius 7. I used three 3D camera systems over a one week period in filming this- two Gopro Duals, each set as different fields of view, and a JVC- TD1. The third chapter- Shipwrecks- was all done with a Gopro Dual. The parts of the first two chapters, that have the most negative parallax/popout, were mostly from the JVC-TD1 with its narrow field of view.

@trimix125: you will need to watch that specific video on a 3D TV. This will have its own glasses requirement depending on the technology used.

The simplest way to watch a "3D" video on Youtube, say on your computer, is when the video is exported in "anaglyph" mode (left image is red, right is blue+green). There you will have to use one of these cheap red/cyan glasses.

Another option is, for a side-by-side "unsqueezed" video, to use a Google cardboard device and your phone. But in this particular example, since the left and right views are squeezed in order to fit into the HD format (they are then expanded and alternated by a 3D TV), trying to watch it with a Google cardboard device would result in... a squeezed aspect ratio. Not very enjoyable in my experience.

Unfortunately, Youtube doesn't convert videos from one format to another anymore (I guess it turned out to be too taxing on their servers), which makes exporting the different versions of a video and uploading them quite painstaking.

I don't have a 3D TV myself, but in my recent experience with 3D video uploading to Youtube, I used a friend of mine as a beta tester. One thing I discovered (reading on the web) is that the Youtube "this is a 3D video" checkbox needs to be unchecked for some 3D TVs to actually do their job of expanding and alternating frames. Sounds counterintuitive, but I confirmed this in my case. The problem is that this is an option which is set by the uploader, not the viewer... All this to warn you that, even though Barry's video is probably perfectly fine, your friend's TV might have some troubles recognizing it as such.

Hi Barry,
what video / cutting card are you using in combination with the Grass Valley programm?
Have done some footage now with the Gopro 3+ 3D housing, now its time to configure a editing machine ;-))
Thanks,
Wolfgang

Hi Barry,
what video / cutting card are you using in combination with the Grass Valley programm?
Have done some footage now with the Gopro 3+ 3D housing, now its time to configure a editing machine ;-))
Thanks,
Wolfgang

Hi Wolfgang,
I'm using a i7 4790K Haswell based system. The graphic card is a Nvidia 970, which seems just fine. If you're going to build a new system, the 4790K Haswells are quite good, or you could go with a new Skylake 6700K. For me, one significant thing about using Edius with the GP .mp4 files is the ability to take advantage of Intel Quick Sync for rendering. It is about a 400% speed increase. Also, Edius 8 adds Quick Sync support to timeline playback as well as rendering. I shoot everything at 2.7K in Protune mode, so working with paired clips is a slow process. Once you've added some filters, you just must accept the fact that you won't get realtime playback, but there are some work arounds for this.

I would also advise that you shoot all underwater content at the Protune white balance raw setting, otherwise you may run into some post headaches in trying to match the white balance of the 2 cameras.

Hi Barry:First off that's great that you are still posting here, I also really have an interest in 3D but so far mostly only land based. I'm also interested in your 3D GoPRO setup, I took a Sony TD-10 to Raja Ampat a couple of years ago, with a modified equinox housing but was not to impressed with the my footage and the narrow angle of view. Do you recommend using a red filter with the Dual gopro 3+ Black set-up? Is it possible to set the GoPro 3+ Blacks to a white balance at depth??? Thanks Steve N.

Hi Barry:First off that's great that you are still posting here, I also really have an interest in 3D but so far mostly only land based. I'm also interested in your 3D GoPRO setup, I took a Sony TD-10 to Raja Ampat a couple of years ago, with a modified equinox housing but was not to impressed with the my footage and the narrow angle of view. Do you recommend using a red filter with the Dual gopro 3+ Black set-up? Is it possible to set the GoPro 3+ Blacks to a white balance at depth??? Thanks Steve N.

Hi, Steve. I believe a red filter is a must! Gopro actually makes a red filter for the Dual housing. As for white balance, you really need to set the cameras in Protune mode and set the WB to RAW, which is an option in the Protune menu. If not, you may end up dealing with slight WB disparities between the 2 cameras in post, which would be no fun. The RAW setting is really very easy to work with in post.

Hi Barry: Thanks for your helpful answer!! I see above that you prefer to shoot in 2.7K in Protune mode with both medium (127 degree), and wide ( 170degree) FOV . After all the video you have taken in warm clear water what setting give you the sharpest and best resolution video, and also which gives you the best 3D effect

when seen on the big screen. I have a 50in Panasonic that is my acid test. Do you ever shoot 1920x108060P in Protune?? I have a modified Gates Housing that I always shoot 1080P60 with a Panasonic triple chip camera and the results are excellent, however I have to do a bit of a run around using the program MuliAVCHD to process after rendering in Sony Vegas 10E so the footage can be seen as real 1080P60using the AVCHD 2.0 protocol. The newer Panasonic and Sony blue ray players accept this.

Hi, Steve. I believe a red filter is a must! Gopro actually makes a red filter for the Dual housing. As for white balance, you really need to set the cameras in Protune mode and set the WB to RAW, which is an option in the Protune menu. If not, you may end up dealing with slight WB disparities between the 2 cameras in post, which would be no fun. The RAW setting is really very easy to work with in post.

Regards,
Barry

GoPro made a red filter for the dual housing? I have not seen it before... Can u help to share the link..?